More needy people in rural areas and from ethnic minority groups have benefited from the government's poverty reduction efforts, says a report here Tuesday.

The government raised the national poverty line to 2,300 yuan ($369) per person per year on average in 2011, and by this criterion more low-income people have been included in poverty reduction programs, says the report titled "Progress in China's Human Rights in 2012" issued by the Information Office of the State Council.

In 2011 a total of 122 million people were covered by poverty reduction programs all over the country, making up 12.7 percent of the rural population, according to the report.

In 2012 the central government spent 299.6 billion yuan on comprehensive poverty reduction programs, an increase of 31.9 percent over the previous year.

By the end of 2012 the size of the impoverished population in rural China had decreased to 98.99 million according to the new criterion, 23.39 million fewer than that at the end of the previous year.

People's living standards in poverty-stricken ethnic-minority areas are continuously improving, the report says.

The central government has been continuously increasing transfer payments to ethnic minority areas. The total amount of transfer payments to eight ethnic-minority provinces (autonomous regions) reached 2.61 trillion yuan in 2012, accounting for 25.7 percent of the total transfer payments from the central government to local governments, up from 24.3 percent in 2010.

The state launched a plan to support the development of ethnic minority groups with fewer populations from 2011 to 2015.

Six ethnic minority groups with populations ranging from 100,000 to 300,000 each have received special funds to help them develop their economy and improve their production and living conditions, the report says.